Inman had previously launched a Indiegogo campaign to buy the site of turn-of-the-century inventor Nikola Tesla's old laboratory in Shorham, N.Y., after it went on sale. But the nearly $2 million it raised was only enough to buy the site, not to actually build and run a museum. The extra $8 million is "the bare minimum to build, staff, and maintain a Nikola Tesla Museum."

Musk's Twitter brief response doesn't clearly state how much help he's going to give the campaign, but Inman wrote that "While we'd be grateful for any amount, any less than $8M would pretty much leave us in the same boat we're in now."